New Fiction
Blinding light by Paul Theroux.
Slade Steadman is the ultimate one-book wonder. His lone opus, published twenty years ago, was Trespassing, a cult classic about his travels through dozens of countries without benefit of passport. With his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend Ava in tow, he sets out for Ecuador's jungle in search of a rare hallucinogenic drug and the cure for his writer's block.
Amid a gang of thrill-seeking tourists, Steadman finds his drug
and his inspiration but is beset with an unnerving side effect—periodic blindness. His world is altered profoundly; Ava stays by his side, he writes an erotic, autobiographical novel with the drug serving as muse, and he returns to stardom, now as a Blind Writer.
He becomes addicted to the drug and the insights it provides, only to have them desert him, along with his sight. Will he regain his vision? His visions? Or will he forgo the world of his imagining and his ambition? As Theroux leads us toward the answers, he makes fresh magic out of the venerable intertwined themes of sight and insight. He also offers incisive, sometimes hilarious takes on the manifold ironies of travel and the trappings of the writer's life—from the fear of the blank page to the unexpected challenges of the book tour.
The company car by C. J. Hribal.
The Company Car opens in 1952 with Wally and Susan Czabek getting married on television in Chicago. The novel is narrated by their son Emil, who is traveling to his parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary. The occasion is bittersweet; the kids are also gathering to decide what is going to happen to their parents as they slide into not being able to care for themselves; and Emil's own marriage is on the brink of dissolving, with the beloved independent bookstore chain he owns possibly being a casualty. Both comically tragic and touching, The Company Car is a sweeping, generational American saga about a family caught in the changing landscape of American life, and announces the voice of an important new writer in American fiction.
A good yarn by Debbie Macomber.
The highly anticipated sequel to "The Shop on Blossom Street." Once again, a disparate group of women find friendship and comfort as they learn the age-old craft of knitting.
The light of day by Jamie M. Saul.
The swords of night and day: a novel of Skilgannon the Damned by David Gemmell.
Even in death, Skilgannon the Damned's name lives on. Now, as an ancient evil threatens the Drenai heartlands, he returns. A thousand years after they fell in battle, two heroes -- Druss and Skilgannon -- are revered throughout the war-torn lands of the Drenai where men and women live in abject fear of the Joinings, abominable meldings of man and beast, and of their mistress the dark sorceress known as the Eternal. None can stave off these ruthless foes. But what if the soul of a hero could be called back from the void, his bones housed again in flesh? An ancient prophecy foretold that Skilgannon would return in his people's darkest hour. To most, this is a foolish hope, but not so to Landis Kan. For years Kan searched for the tomb of Skilgannon the Damned. And at last, he found it, gathered up the bones and performed the mystic ritual. But the reborn hero is an enigma; a young man whose warrior skills are blunted and whose memories are fragmented. This Skilgannon is a man out of time, marooned in a world as strange to him as a dream, remote from all he knew and loved. Or nearly all. Before bringing Skilgannon back, Landis Kan had experimented with other bones in the hero's tomb. That ritual resulted in a surly giant who possessed astounding strength, but no memories. To Kan, he is a dangerous failure. To Skilgannon, this giant represents their last hope. As the ageless evil of the Eternal threatens to drown the Drenai lands in blood, two legendary heroes rise again.